


Brown Is The New Pink

by chantiemaya



Series: Trixya Drabble / Unfinished Stories [3]
Category: RuPaul's Drag Race RPF
Genre: Crime, F/F, Fluff, Prison, Racism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-20
Updated: 2018-06-20
Packaged: 2019-05-25 22:48:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14987261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chantiemaya/pseuds/chantiemaya
Summary: Katya is a librarian who gets a new and exciting job; she'll get to manage a women's prison library. She clicks well with some of the inmates, but one of them stands out in particular.(This is part of my drabble / unfinished series! I will probably never finish this!)*DISCLAIMER*This is a work of fiction using characters created by others. I do not own these characters, nor did I get official consent from their owners. The only intent of this work is to entertain readers, not to get any type of financial gain. The acts in this story aren’t necessarily condoned by their creators or by me. Read with caution and read the tags.





	Brown Is The New Pink

A first day on a new job is always a little scary and exciting, and Katya Zamolodchikova felt her heartbeat in her throat as she parked her old Cadillac outside what would be her new work place. The beautiful weather couldn’t help the grim, grey front of the building, it was still depressing and boring, but Katya tried her best to not be intimidated. She’d been here before, when she applied for the position of librarian at the R. A. Charles Women’s Correctional Facility of Los Angeles County.  
  
She had to sign in at the porter’s desk and got an identification pass that had to be visible at all times. She had to put all her personal belongings in a locker and then go through a metal detector. A prison guard escorted her to the library, a tall, African-American woman by the name of Latrice. She looked menacing and intimidating, but she was very sweet and explained to Katya how she could walk herself to the library the next day, that she could always use the phone on her desk to call the guards’ office if she had any questions, and to definitely use the panic button under the desk if she found herself in a difficult situation.  
  
“This facility houses only women, and most of the employees are women, which means things can get a little heated sometimes. When you feel like you no longer have control over the situation, call us or press the button. We’ll be right there to help you out.”  
  
Latrice let them into the library floor with her pass key. It was quiet and deserted and, quite frankly, a bit of a mess.  
  
“So it’s just me here?” Katya asked.  
  
“Yeah, we used to let inmates do chores here, but that got a little out of hand. Our last librarian didn’t take the rules very seriously and the inmates used the library for some… illegal activity. There’s a folder on your desk that you should study, so it won’t happen again.”  
  
Latrice winked at Katya, and then she was off, closing the barred door behind her and shuffling through the hallway.  
  
Katya was alone, it was quiet, and there were about a gazillion books that had to be organized. She snickered softly to herself - it was almost perfect.  
  
The library was open every work day from nine to twelve in the morning, and then again from one to four in the afternoon. It seemed very little to Katya, for a prison population of about 800, but for now she wouldn’t question anything.  
  
Reading through the folder Latrice had pointed out, Katya realized it was a manual for prison employees and contained mostly information about what they couldn’t do. It didn’t specifically state anything about librarians, but she took it at face value. When she got tired of reading rules, she walked around the rows of bookshelves and quickly saw there was very little order in the books. The biggest category by far was ‘Legal reference works’, and the second was books and audio on learning languages. There were no other audio books and very little romance or crime novels, but an abundance of self help books, most of them with some sort of religious undertone.  
  
While mapping out the categories, Katya pushed around a book cart that she used to collect books that were in the wrong category. She worked diligently and concentrated, and almost jumped up when there was a buzzing sound and the barred door opened. A tall, young woman walked in, stunningly beautiful with a full head of Afro hair.  
  
“Uhm, hi.” The woman smiled shyly and looked uncomfortable in her poopy brown inmate uniform that seemed way too big on her, although the pants were a little short.  
  
“Hello! Can I help you?”  
  
Katya was excited about her first interaction with an actual inmate, and she looked friendly enough.  
  
“Yeah, well… maybe.” The woman had a charming southern lilt to her voice, and Katya held out her hand.  
  
“I’m Katya. Tell me what you’re looking for.”  
  
“I’m Chi Chi. I need, uh… information on… uh, the law.”  
  
Katya chuckled.  
  
“Well, we have a lot of that, all over this wall.”  
  
Chi Chi still looked very uncomfortable, but followed Katya to the wall and stared at the rows and rows of books.  
  
“There’s all the law books up here, from parking tickets to mass murder and hacking, there are books specifically about prison law, state and federal, about interactions with the police and lawyers…”  
  
Chi Chi held up a finger.  
  
“The thing about police. I wanna know, like… about how they treat you, and stuff.”  
  
Realization dawned on Katya, taking in the tall, gorgeous woman, African-American, from some Southern state judging her accent.  
  
“Do you wanna tell me what happened?”  
  
Chi Chi’s look changed from shy to defensive and she crossed her arms. Katya backtracked quickly.  
  
“I mean, hypothetically speaking, what kind of situation would you want to investigate?”  
  
“Hypo…?”  
  
“Hypothetically, it means, ‘what if’. It doesn’t have to be an actual situation.”  
  
Chi Chi relaxed again.  
  
“Ok, so like, what if…” she looked at Katya, and Katya smiled and motioned for her to go on while finding the right reference book.  
  
“What if someone was arrested for something they did, something illegal, but they really didn’t have a choice when they did it.”  
  
“Like self defense?”  
  
“No, no, it wasn’t like that, it’s like… if that person didn’t do what someone else told them to do, something bad would happen.”  
  
Chi Chi looked very conflicted now, and Katya took a few books from the shelf although she had little hope they would help the woman.  
  
“Let’s sit down. Do you want a cup of coffee?” Chi Chi’s eyes lit up at that.  
  
“You have actual coffee here?”  
  
Katya brought back two mugs of steaming black, actual coffee, and opened one of the books on police conduct.  
  
“Listen, I know I’m new here and you don’t know me at all, but I’ve studied the law. I went to law school, but I never became a lawyer because of some shit I’d done. And I know there’s a lot of shit that the police or other law enforcement do, that’s not ok.” Katya had taken off her glasses and looked at Chi Chi from over her coffee mug.  
  
“What’d you do?”  
  
Katya laughed. “I was told never to ask that of any inmate, and now you’re asking me this on my first day?”  
  
Chi Chi smiled, and it looked good on her, Katya thought.  
  
“I dabbled in drugs. I used just about anything under the sun, and when I couldn’t afford it anymore, I sold it, and then I got a debt with my supplier, and to make more money I became a prostitute, and… it was a mess.”  
  
Chi Chi’s eyes were wide.  
  
“Did you go to jail?”  
  
“No, I got off with community service and forced rehab. Then I finished law school, but with a conviction to my name, I couldn’t get an internship at a law firm. Law students need an internship for a certain amount of time to become an actual lawyer.”  
  
“So then… you became a librarian.”  
  
“Exactly! And I write legal articles sometimes. I didn’t turn out too bad.” Katya winked and she felt Chi Chi was now a little more relaxed.  
  
“Ok, well, Miss Katya. I also have a conviction, and I feel it’s unfair. But my experiences aren’t so good with… white people.”  
  
“I can only imagine. White people are assholes,” Katya started dryly.  
  
“I have met some white police assholes and I think they treated me wrong.”  
  
Katya sighed. “I’m sorry, Chi Chi, I really am. I hope you wanna try me, because I’m always trying really hard to not be a white asshole. Why do you think they treated you wrong?”  
  
“Trixie told me. She’s in here, too, she’s really smart, she said that how they handled my case was not right, but my lawyer was… a dickhead, and… he didn’t do anything.”  
  
The women spend about an hour more talking about Chi Chi’s case, in which her husband made her steal and lie, and when she tried to get out of it, he twisted everything around and got custody of their children - which was exactly what he’d been using to get her to do what he wanted. With her husband being white, and all the police officers being white, and even her lawyer being a while male, Chi Chi stood no chance and was convicted while her husband was off the hook and now had full custody of their children.  
  
Chi Chi wasn’t just a black woman from the south who had fallen in love with a low life white criminal from California, she was also basically illiterate and didn’t have a dollar to her name. When she left the library, she did so with an English textbook and a big smile on her face and her head held high, because Katya had told her she definitely had options. For starters, she could use her time in prison - presumably six years and eight months left - to educate herself, and in the meantime she could appeal her case or file an official complaint, even without having any money.  
  
Apparently there was an inmate by the name of Trixie, who was giving others legal advice from her jail cell. This tickled Katya’s interest, but she wouldn’t get to see this woman until her third week at the library. She had Chi Chi coming in twice a week in the afternoon, with her English homework, and she’d started to bring a friend, another inmate, born and raised in Mexico. She went by the name Yara - nobody ever mentioned their last name here, Katya had found out, and she was perfectly ok with keeping hers to herself. Yara spoke English quite well, although her accent was so thick it was hard to understand her, and she could barely read in English, let alone write it. In the third week, the women brought in another friend, a shy, young girl who introduced herself as Adore. She was dyslexic, but had never gotten any extra attention in school. She had managed graduate high school because she was really good in every other subject but English. Katya felt like she was talking to a highly intelligent person, who could’ve easily finished a university level education if people around her had just paid a little more attention. And perhaps if her mother hadn’t been a spaced out addict.  
  
Somewhere in the back of her mind, Katya was a little anxious about their little meetings on Tuesday and Friday afternoons. She wasn’t quite sure if she was breaking any rules or not, but the manual wasn’t conclusive and she enjoyed herself, so… as long as nobody intervened, she liked helping the women.  
  
The only downside to it was, that there was a maximum number of inmates allowed in the library at one time, and that number was three per staff member. As it was only Katya working there now, she was at full capacity when the homework class was in session.  
  
On a Friday morning, just before Katya expected her three pupils to show up, the door buzzed open. Katya looked up happily, grabbing the thermos of coffee and mugs and walked to the table in the middle of the room. But it wasn’t Chi Chi, Yara and Adore that walked in. Instead it was prison Barbie in full brown inmate uniform glory, and she took Katya’s breath away. Long, bright blonde locks framed the girl’s face, teased to perfection, with side-swept bangs that made her look like she stepped right out of a 90’s high school yearbook. She wore heavy black liner around her eyes and her blush matched her light pink lipstick.  
  
“Hey,” the girl said, smiling sweetly and wiggling her fingers at Katya.  
  
“Hi! Can I help you?” Katya’s mouth had gone dry taking in her gorgeous face, and she had to force herself to look the girl into her sky blue eyes and not stray and try to find her curves in the poopy brown suit. I am so gay, Katya thought to herself. So, so gay.  
  
“Well, maybe.”  
  
Katya put the thermos and the mugs down in the table and held out her hand.  
  
“I’m Katya, welcome. What are you looking for?”  
  
“Trixie. I just… I wanted to thank you, for helping my friends. I know they’re coming soon, so I won’t be long.”  
  
The girl held Katya’s hand in both of hers and stared at her so long, it made Katya feel uncomfortable. She pulled her hand back from the girl’s grip. The girl was taller than Katya, even though Katya was wearing heeled boots and the girl was in flip flops. They were pink, as were her toenails, her fingernails, her lips, her cheeks…  
  
“Oh, well, I like helping them.” Katya chuckled nervously. “Do you want to get books?”  
  
Trixie giggled a little. “What I want isn’t here, so. I guess not.”  
  
“Really? The collection isn’t great, I know, I’ve been sorting it out since I got here. But I have a small budget to put in special orders, if you like.”  
  
“Well, I’d love to reread ‘Tipping the Velvet’. Or something along those lines, maybe more recent.”  
  
Katya thought that if Trixie hadn’t painted on her blush, her cheeks would be a natural pink now, and it was very cute and sexy how she bit her lip and tried to act all coy, asking the librarian for lesbian erotica. Little did this girl, this temptress, know, that Katya was an actual self proclaimed expert in this gene. But, she was also an expert in prison library rules now, and she knew a request for such fiction wouldn’t be granted.  
  
“Ah, an excellent choice, Miss. I’m afraid the warden won’t let me order such books.” Katya looked apologetic, and Trixie’s face fell a little. She sighed and smiled again.  
  
“I expected as much. Doesn’t hurt to try, right.”  
  
“I would bring you a whole stack from my personal collection if I was allowed to, but sadly…”  
  
Katya’s phone rang then, and she excused herself to pick it up. It was Latrice from the office down the hall.  
  
“Katya, I have three ladies here who wanna get to the library, but I know you already got one. Is she about done?”  
  
Katya confirmed that it wouldn’t take much longer and then went back to the blonde, who was now perusing the shelf of romance novels.  
  
“See anything you like?” Katya asked. Trixie looked at her with that cute smile again.  
  
“I don’t think so. But I’ll come back some time to have a good look. I guess your students are waiting.”  
  
Trixie left then, and a moment later, Adore, Yara and Chi Chi came in. They all made good progress on their homework, and Katya spent some time with each of them to help them out.  
  
“Oh man, maybe when I’m done with this I can read an actual book,” Adore exclaimed with her slow, low voice as she thumbed through the pages of her junior high level English course book.  
  
When the library was quiet again and Katya had some time to kill, she sat at the ancient desktop computer and made a list of books she wanted to add to the the collection, and then also wrote to the warden that she felt she could handle working with more inmates at a time. On Monday morning, Katya saw the email from the warden that there was no budget for new books at this time, but that she would allow four people to enter the library at a time. This made Katya happy, because more inmates were starting to visit the library, popping in usually late morning and all afternoon. Most inmates had chores in the morning, so that was the time Katya spent on keeping the library tidy and taking care of the returned books. 


End file.
